This excerpt is from Woodrow Wilson's 2 April, 1917 "War Message to Congress". Wilson emphasizes the importance of human lives over material thing by saying "I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved ......... but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children". Applying the rhetoric in his speech Wilson uses persuasive language to make the nation enter the war with Germany.